ContentKeeper selected to provide Web filtering for 53,000 iPads in National 1:1 Best Practice Initiative

By Carletta

October 22nd, 2013

Orange, CA (October 22, 2013) – Web and mobile security vendor ContentKeeper Technologies today announced that it has been selected in a groundbreaking national 1:1 best practice initiative to secure and monitor 53,000 iPads to be distributed to students in the Lewisville Independent School District (ISD), TX.

ContentKeeper was chosen from among several Web security and mobile device control vendors. Lewisville ISD needed to ensure policy compliance for both the allocated 1:1 iPads and enable BYOD for any devices brought onto the school’s network as part of the district’s 1:Xä Initiative.

The vision of the district’s 1:X initiative is to provide for the right device at the right time. This was uncharted territory for the school’s IT team. The 1:X initiative is a pilot project to introduce tablet mobile devices use into schools and reshape how students and teachers interact with technology in the 21st century learning environment. Manager of Network and Technical Services, Patrick Johnson was charged with ensuring 1:X remained CIPA compliant and students remained accountable for their Web use.

“1:X was totally new for us. There was no roadmap for this. Introducing iPads, which are essentially consumer devices, into an enterprise network and getting everything to work is challenging. ContentKeeper was device agnostic and helped make a logistically challenging task easier by enabling us to ensure devices are managed centrally, without having to touch the devices themselves,” said Mr. Johnson

ContentKeeper’s Chief Technology Officer, Mark Riley commented; “We are extremely pleased to have been selected. Lewisville’s 1:X project was well defined but no one had really achieved what they wanted to do on this scale before. It took out-of-the-box thinking and some inspired development effort to help Lewisville achieve the level of device control and accountability they wanted. The end result is something that any district can deploy to gather information about and control mobile devices coming and going from their networks. The whole impetus for Web security and safety has shifted to mobile data and device agnostic environments.”

Lewisville ISD already had a CIPA compliant Web filtering technology solution in place. But, the existing filter did not meet the district’s needs for ensuring Web protection for students and staff on their mobile devices as well desktops. The Lewisville IT team also identified SSL inspection and granular social media and Web 2.0 application controls as critical requirements that they needed a new Web filtering solution to provide.

“We liked the way ContentKeeper handled SSL filtering and Web 2.0 applications. This was critical for us – it’s what the kids do. We identified a number of social media applications we needed to be able to granually control. ContentKeeper enables us to set granular policies over social networking sites and applications. When we identified one or two media types that didn’t appear to be available in the product, ContentKeeper added support for them overnight. It’s a level of support and responsiveness that we hadn’t seen from a vendor before,” explained Mr. Johnson

According to Mr. Johnson, ContentKeeper Technologies’ support and ability to deliver was the deciding factor in being selected.

“ContentKeeper provided amazing support. They even helped us develop a custom solution to centrally manage devices and help ensure students only used approved software profiles. When we had questions about how we could prevent students from wiping the fixed settings on their iPads, ContentKeeper delivered the answers,” Mr Johnson concluded.